Watstein Terepka Adds Three Attorneys in Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES, CA (JUNE 2, 2026) — Watstein Terepka LLP, a national litigation boutique built for high-stakes disputes, has added Matthew Venezia and George Laiolo as partners and Daniel Contreras as an associate in its Los Angeles office. These additions further bolster the firm’s national litigation practice and West Coast presence.
“Matt, George, and Dan reflect exactly what we look for in litigators,” said Ryan Watstein, founding partner at Watstein Terepka. “They each bring a willingness to take on high-stakes cases and a demonstrated ability to win them.”
Matthew Venezia brings nearly 15 years of experience in class-action, intellectual-property, false-advertising, and anti-discrimination litigation. He comes to Watstein Terepka with a record of wins against some of the largest and most prestigious law firms in the country, most recently securing class certification in litigation challenging race-based kidney-transplant criteria, winning dismissal of unfair competition claims affirmed by the Ninth Circuit, and obtaining a reversal of summary judgment in a trademark dispute against Dropbox.
“I want to work cases where the other side hires the biggest and most expensive firm they could find. That’s where the quality of work matters most,” said Venezia. “Watstein Terepka was built around that same drive: take the hardest fight in the room and win it by being the most dogged and most creative, and by producing the best quality work for clients.”
George Laiolo developed and prosecuted the kidney-transplant class action with Matt while securing separate, significant results of his own. He obtained the second-largest jury verdict in California in 2024 in a trademark case between warring compounding pharmacies. Before joining Watstein Terepka, he wrote and successfully argued every kind of motion in multimillion-dollar cases spanning diverse industries like video games, graphic design, and online content creation.
Daniel Contreras advises clients ranging from individuals to multibillion-dollar companies in high-stakes, complex litigation nationwide. His experience spans all stages of litigation across civil rights, commercial disputes, consumer protection, copyright infringement, fraud, personal injury, and trade secret misappropriation. In addition to his victories in the kidney transplant matters with Venezia and Laiolo, his recent successes include a complete defense verdict after a five-week trial involving a real estate developer, a victory in arbitration involving breach of contract, victories on summary judgment across a variety of matters, and defeating a motion for preliminary injunction in a bet-the-company arbitration.
Contreras and Laiolo both earned their Juris Doctors from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, where they competed together (and against each other) on the Berkeley Law Trial Team. Venezia earned his Juris Doctor, cum laude, from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis.
About Watstein Terepka LLP
Watstein Terepka is a national litigation boutique built for clients who need elite writing, advocacy, and strategies that do not come from the standard playbook. The firm represents public and private companies, private-equity portfolio companies, and individuals in nationwide class actions, mass arbitrations, complex commercial litigation, appeals, and compliance matters across the country. Our lawyers represent clients in matters where judgment, creativity, intensity, and results matter more than convention.